Wednesday, March 29, 2006
9:52 PM
I've found a gem in Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt which I picked up in the library one day. Here is the small section that moved me so much that I needed to let the whole world see it.
...
"Why" is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.
The alphabet does not go "A B C D What? When? How?" but it does go "V W X Why? Z."
"Why? is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you "What's the time?" or "When was the battle of 1066?" or "How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?" The answers are easy and are, respectively,"Seven thirty-five in the evening," "Ten-fifteen in the morning," and "Don't ask stupid questions."
But when you hear the word "WhY?," you know you've put one of the biggest unanswerables on your hands, such as "Why are we born?" or "Why do we die?" and "Why do we spend so much time of the intervening time receiving junk mail?"
Or this one:
"Will you go to bed with me?"
"Why?"
There's only ever been one good answer to that questions "Why?" and perhaps we should have that in the alphabet as well. There's room for it. "Why?" doesn't have to be the last word, it isn't even the last letter. How would it be if the alphabet ended, "V W X Why? Z," but "V W X Why not?"
Don't ask stupid questions.
-From Hockney's Alphabet
(pages 9-10 of Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt)
...
I think whenever anyone asks me a "How?" question, I'll still answer "Carefully". It's a lot more polite I think. Now I'm fully armed for my future vocation as a source of reliable and knowledgeable answers to a generation of inquisitive minds.
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I'm going to start a Zhang Shao Han Fan Club!!!!
Thursday, March 23, 2006
9:40 PM
I'm one lucky guy.
It turned out (if what I was told was true) that 3000 people queued up to get 500 tickets. And I was landed with FRONT ROW SEATS! FRONT ROW SEATS! Right under her gorgeous nose. Chee Hui was cheekily snapping away with his digital camera, explaining how he'd only have a few megabytes left, but he's going to overwrite everything with pictures of Angela anyways.
FRONT ROW SEATS! FRONT ROW SEATS!!!!!!!!!!!11
She was so pretty, so radiant, like the sun, that I couldn't bear to look straight at her face for more than a few seconds.
FRONT ROW SEATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I wished I was standing somewhere at the back, with all those fangirls who came in school uniform. Then I could wave frantically with wild abandon at her until she waved back at me with a bright smile, and I'd short-circuit and go crazy and jump around and fall down and break a toe or something. And then I'd be crying at night because I couldn't sleep, because I couldn't stop thinking about that instant when my goddess looked into my eyes and permanently seared me with the brilliance of her smile.
And now, I'll probably be losing sleep anyways, thinking about why I didn't volunteer to go up and sing her a song, so that I could shake her hand and not wash my hands for the next decade or so, thinking about why I didn't wave to her when I was right in front of her, so far yet so near, why I didn't just care less about what the rest of the 499 of them behind me would think if a front-seater acted so crazily, so that I could lose sleep thinking about her smile instead of losing sleep thinking about not having seen her smile.
FRONT ROW SEATS! I STILL CAN"T BELIEVE IT!
Oh here are the photos, ain't she gorgeous? And unless you're going to say yes, you better not comment.
So who wants to join me on Saturday 3pm at Junction 8 and Sunday 5pm at Tampines Mall? Heheheh.
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Why I like KTV
Monday, March 20, 2006
10:48 AM
From what I see, there're generally two types of people who sing publicly, ie singing in hearing distance of at least one other person. The first type sings publicly because he/she truly loves the song and sincerely wants to share the beauty and glory of the song, regardless of how badly he/she sings it. Normally, for this type of singer, their singing ability is inversely proportional to the extent of their facial expression.
The second type sings publicly because he/she truly loves his/her own voice and sincerely wants to share the beauty and glory of his/her voice.
I used to know someone from my camp who really loved the sound of his own voice. He doesn't really sing publicly very often, especially when he can be seen by everyone. Instead, he'd quietly sneak into the toilet while no one is looking, and then overflow the toilet with his bellowing voice.
I remember that I could never really make out what song he was actually really singing, but I distinctly remember hearing, from the corridoor outside the bunks, the intense sense of self-gratification expressed within the voice. He really loved the sound of his own voice, and this pleasure at hearing his own voice being echoed back to him (and out to us) in the toilet resonated very clearly in the tone and expression of his voice. I really couldn't help it, but the first words that came to my mind was 'aural *a**u**a*io*'. I told him that, and well, the thing is, it appeared to me that the only thing he seemed to be concerned with, despite my rather unkind remark, was what I really thought of his voice.
Hehe, I guess if anyone had a horrible voice, he/she wouldn't be able to force himself/herself to love it half as much as my friend does.
And then there was once, I was taking a taxi back to camp one early morning. As usual, I was feeling a little worried that the taxi driver might be one of those tired sleepy drivers (it must be really hard to stay awake and alert after one long night of taxi-ing around, life is hard). I was still nervously glancing at the old uncle in the driver's seat every now and then to make sure that he was not showing tell-tale signs of dozing off.
And then he started singing softly.
He was singing some chinese folk song with a very clear and crispy falsetto. It went on for about 5 minutes. And then he started a small conversation with me about his voice. Apparently, he was trained in some form of qigong in his youth, something called 'tu na gong', which allowed him to sing with 'seven different types of voices'. He could sing like a girl, with a consistent falsetto, he could sing like a deep-voiced man, and many more. A few of which he duly demonstrated to me while I rejoiced in the realisation that he was not likely going to doze off or grunt into sleep.
The old uncle really loved his own voice as well, because I couldn't really hear what he was singing, only that he was straining to let me hear the significant differences between his manly voice and his girly voice. I could almost see the glimmer in his eyes when he detected the slight look of amazement that I was trying to hide.
'If that Project Superstar don't have age limit, this old man would win it already. My voice, very tok kong one ok!'
...
Of course, there are people who belong to both categories, or not at all. And I love to irritate the crap out of the two types of singers as outlined above by singing crappily and loudly at the climax of their favourite songs, when the song is at its nicest, or the singer's voice is being stretched to sound its nicest.
Unfortunately, I never manage to irritate the people I go for KTV with very much, because they don't take their own singing so seriously...
ZL and Jan, it was fun, but that's about enough KTV I've had for the next 10 years. 6 hours leh, and only 3 people singing! That's like 2 hours per person! You're nuts!
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